Rou Baffroom Edfinshur, Phrt Foruhteen

At long long last, our new baffroom is mostly finished. Well, okay, there's still a bit of work to do, but it's mostly cosmetic and can be accomplished in a weekend.

As I've mentioned, three weekends back we tiled the floor and a couple days later we grouted that mother. All was good and went off with only a handful of hitches and looked fantastic afterward.

Keeping our momentum, two weekends back, we put up the sections of drywall we needed, installed a new toilet intake hose, put the final seal on our toilet flange, removed the old crappy pipes that formerly lead to the sink and installed two new water valves in their place. Of course, we didn't do all that in the proper order. The wife wasn't in the mood to do the drywalling, but really really wanted to install the toilet on Friday night, despite the fact that a major section of the drywalling was directly behind where it would sit. I argued that we should not only install the drywall first, but we should also paint it before the toilet was even brought in. If we had to pull it out to do all that, we were needlessly wasting effort. Didn't matter. The wife was determined that the toilet was going to be in place and working because this would represent accomplishing something that evening. The drywalling could wait a week. Sure, it would tear up the one wax ring we had to do this, but we could just get another. I hated the idea. It galls me to have to do the same job twice in nearly any circumstance, and I said as much. But there was also something to be said for not starting a major argument over something that, truth be told, was a fairly easy installation to repeat. So we put the toilet in. No sooner had we screwed it to the floor then it occurred to the wife that she had failed to remove the old rag she'd been keeping in the neck of the toilet flange to stave off fumes from the septic tank. We had to pull the toilet up to get the rag, which tore the wax ring and kind of took the gloss off our former sense of accomplishment. The next day, we did the drywalling and decided to leave the "terlet" until after painting.

This past weekend, we buckled down and committed to finishing as much of the bathroom as we could. To us this meant the installation of the vanity, sink and toilet and then paint the room. As always, we were of the opinion that these were each straightforward projects that would not take an unnecessary amount of time to accomplish.

Let me say a few words about preparation and planning. It's good to do them both and well in advance of beginning the project. Oh, sure, there's always stuff that comes up you didn't consider, particularly if you're an amateur at this sort of thing, as are we. However, when, say, , but there are certain things that should always be taken into account.

For instance: When shopping for a vanity that has been designed to look like kind of like a table with a sink on top and a drawer for wash cloths or butt paper or whathaveyou at the bottom, with the plumbing exposed between the two, it's often a good idea to measure in advance to know whether or not that plumbing will indeed fit there. We did not. (And I say "we" so as not to get in trouble--not that "I" would have thought to do so had "I" been the one to pick it out.)

As you might now suppose, we did not engage in said necessary measurements when we ordered the vanity back in December. And were a mite put out to discover our mistake at this extraordinarily late stage in the project. One trip to Lowes and a consultation with a knowledgeable plumbing guy later, though, and we had a new set of pipes to install that would pretzel around, allowing the water to flow out and for the pipes not to be resting directly on the lower shelf. We had already been planning to ditch the ugly old pipes anyway.

Our errors in preparation were not over, however. Turns out, not only did our new vanity not allow for the natural fitting of the pipes, but it was too tall for the electrical outlet as well, blocking half of it. We cussed and fumed for a while, then sat down to look at our options. Option #1: Shave off some of the legs of the vanity (not a good option, as they had the leveling feet built in); Option #2: move the outlet up the wall six inches. Fortunately, the electrical wires within the walls came from above, so we figured we could do it. It took a while to accomplish it and was not without its problems, but the finished product came out pretty well.

Before we installed the vanity and toilet, however, we did what previous asshole owners of the house failed to do and for which future owners of the house will sing our praises: we painted the walls behind them IN ADVANCE!!! Nothing huge, just a couple of coats in their silhouette. How's that for planning?

The toilet installation went pretty much according to plan. We put it in, attached the tank and other than a very brief leak that was fixed by tightening a bolt, it was good. I've never said this about a toilet before, but ours is a thing of beauty and grace and low water flow. The vanity installation took a lot longer and was rife with further complications. I'd rather not dwell on them. We survived.

This week I painted the room and was never so happy to see that awful shade of salmon keel over in the river and get flushed out to sea, having failed to spawn. The new color is a lot cooler and ties perfectly into the colors of the floor and the fixtures and the shower curtain upon which we based most of our color decisions in the room. At right is the work from this weekend.

Now all we have left is some caulking, finding a new mirror and new light to go above it, some baseboard to put in and various things like towel racks and shelves added.

Avie: Portrait of a Serial Killer

When I was a kid, I rode shotgun on a lot of car trips with my dad. The vast majority of these were weekend jaunts from where we lived in north Mississippi to Wayne County, three hours south, where my grandparents lived and where my little sister lived for the first four years of her life. This being the case, the trips were frequent, almost every weekend, sometimes every other.

One of my least favorite memories of trips like this were the occasional animal strikes. It's the law of averages, I guess, that when you're on the road so often you have more opportunity to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, just as an animal--a possum, armadillo, rabbit, dog or cat--dashes out into the rural two lane highway far too soon to be avoided and is struck. Only, sometimes, the hit wasn't a direct one where you know the animal died, but instead an ambiguous graze--one you know will eventually lead to death, but not for a while. My father was not a man to have animals suffer needlessly and on those occasions he would invariably stop and back up until he found the animal, ascertain its status and, usually, deliver the "endgame" by running over the animal again. As a kid it was a terrible thing to have to experience, sitting there in the passenger seat, fingers in ears trying to stave off the inevitable crunch. Dad always tried to explain his reasoning afterward. I understood where he was coming from, but I always hated it and wished he could just forget about it and move on.

"Can't you just let them die in peace?" I once said, after I'd grown old enough to attempt to challenge my status quo a bit more. Dad considered this, but ultimately went back to his own method on the rare occasion animals strayed terminally into our path.

I tell that story to tell this one...

Now that she's nearly full grown, Avie kitty has begun to fancy herself quite the hunter. During all hours she's not asleep, she wants to be outside looking for mice or bugs or other woodland creatures to stalk and torment. Now, I realize that this is what cats naturally do and they're very good at it. And I'd be happy for Avie to do this, provided she actually killed and ate the things she caught. Instead, she usually torments them to death, batting them around until she eventually wounds them mortally, and when they stop trying to get away, she loses interest and wanders off. She might come back to kick their mousy corpses around, later, but I've never observed her to actually eat one.

A couple weeks back, I found one of her victims. It was a small mouse, broken but still breathing. And suddenly, there it was, my dad's outlook on mercy-killing sliding right into place in my head. If the cat wasn't going to kill it, I had to. I didn't fret much about killing a mouse because I've killed plenty in traps before. But I didn't like that I had to do it.

Last weekend, it got worse.

While the wife and I were enjoying some lunch on the back deck, we noticed Avie marching up the back of our hill with something big in her mouth. She dropped it before I could get a look at it, but we kept watching to see what she might come up with. Instead, she stayed just over the hill, romping and playing with something we couldn't see. Curious, we arose to go see what it was and found the cat crouched beside a tiny rabbit. It wasn't as small as the ones I nearly killed with the mower when we first moved here, but was possibly not too far out of the nest. At first, it seemed lifeless, and I hoped in my heart that it was already dead. But then I saw its sides moving with its breathing. I chased the cat away from it and stooped down to have a look.

It was definitely unconscious. Other than a tear in it's ear, the little rabbit didn't have any immediately noticeable signs of damage. I wondered if maybe it was only stunned, but thought it more likely that it had internal or spinal injuries. The wife came over to examine it and found there was a gash in the rabbit's other side and another deeper wound on its back leg that showed some muscle tearing. We knew then that this little guy was pretty much a goner. Those kind of injuries wouldn't heal on their own in the wild and it would likely be a $1000 vet bill to try and save it otherwise. As the wife pointed out, if left untreated, the wounds would become infected and if the rabbit didn't die before that, it would die a long and painful death.

The wife, who'd been examining the rabbit, leaned over to put it back on the ground, but as she did it woke up and screamed. And as it screamed, it kicked all of its legs, which scared my wife, causing her to drop the rabbit into the leaves. Rabbits aren't generally known for their noise, but they can make some when they need to. Once on the ground, the rabbit continued to yelp, drawing Avie's attention.

"Maybe Avie will kill it," the wife said in a fearfully hopeful tone.

"She won't kill it," I said. "She'll just torment it more."

We were going to need to do the job.

I picked the rabbit up, being careful to keep him covered by my hands so he couldn't kick his way out of my grip. Spinal injury didn't seem to be an issue with him. Fortunately, he went unconscious again. We took him around behind our woodpile, where I lay him down on the flat half of a split log. The wife brought me my ax.

"You're going to have to do this in one swing," the wife said. I nodded. But as accurate as I usually am with an ax, I didn't trust myself to get it right. Better to place the ax where we wanted to cut and hit the back of it with a rock. After shedding some tears at having to take this life, I did the deed.

Needless to say, the cat immediately found a place at the top of my shit list.

Later in the afternoon, the wife called from the living room saying, "You should come see your kitty. She's awfully cute."

"I don't want to see that cat," I said. I knew the cat was snoozing on a pillow on a chair in the front window.

"No, you should really come see."

So I did. Sure enough, she was terribly cute as she slept. So cute, in fact, that I had to take a picture.

And after I'd taken it, I slapped the pillow beside her and yelled "Start over!"

A picture of two beautiful things (a.k.a. "Our baffroom adventure Part 13")

Pictured above is my freshly grouted baffroom floor atop which rests a nearly full Starbucks Coffee Keg lovingly gifted to me by my wife after being left over from a drug-rep visit to her office full of blessedly non-coffee drinking coworkers.

Oruh Baffroom Advainchur, Part Tuwelvuh

Keeping our momentum from last weekend going, this weekend we laid the floor tile. And like each step of this project has proven thus far, the job was both easier and harder than we anticipated and took quite a bit more time than we'd anticipated.

We knew in advance that we wanted to lay our tile in a diagonal pattern despite the fact that this would be, as I suggested, a pain in the ass to accomplish. It was, but I knew that if we could pull it off the results would be worth it.

Trouble was, tiling diagonally meant a lot more cutting of tiles. Compounding this was the fact that our cheap ass tile-cutter couldn't hack the floor tiles we'd chosen. We tested it with two Friday evening and while the cutter successfully split them, it did so in the wrong direction and without clean lines. Rather than waste more tile on practicing, we opted to drop $40 and rent a proper high-end tile saw, the kind with water and everything. It sliced right through the tiles like a water-cooled tile-cutter through tile, creating perfect, clean cuts.

After that we mixed up some mortar and began slapping them down in the pre-determined pattern. Well, I say pre-determined. We'd really only laid out a couple rows to show where some of the half-tiles would lay. After that it was pretty much wild west tile improvisation territory. Still, while I was laying tile down, the wife was running back and forth to the saw to bring me whatever size tile I needed to fit a given space. And, because I was using my tile spacers correctly, these were pretty much uniform pieces that made for a nice and evenly-spaced diagonal pattern.

Even with all the things going right for us, there were wrongs being accomplished all the same. Not only did I have to lay tile down into the raked mortar and make sure they were evenly spaced, creating parallel lines, I was also supposed to make sure they were all of the same height within that mortar. For the first half of the room, I did pretty well with this. After a long break, though, we came back for the second half--i.e. the more chaotic half--and keeping track of heights and depths took a back seat to filling holes before the mortar dried. The finished job was deceivingly good-looking, though, and it wasn't until we reexamined it Sunday morning that we found the trouble-spots.

One purchase of a tile puck later and we were able to find which tiles were the biggest offenders. Those we pried up, scraped off all the mortar on the floor beneath them, and then laid fresh new tiles down in their place. The finished product looks very nice. Sure, if you want to be nitpicky, there are some flaws here and there, but we tried to arrange for most of those to be covered up by baseboard.

Now we just have to grout it. And baseboard it. And put in the "terlet" and the sink. I have a feeling there will be much plumbing in my future next weekend.

Our Medcon Adventure, Part 7

The MedCon adventure culminated with a massive banquet on Saturday night, complete with a fabulous meal and the obligatory convention banquet banter from the podium filled with inside jokes I didn't get. I didn't care, though, because I was full of good food and decent wine and an assortment of tasty desserts.

On Sunday, the wife and I lit out around noon and headed up to Georgetown so I could introduce her to Five Guys Burgers. She agreed it was a tasty burger, but I suspect she didn't find the journey nor the crowds nor the near obscene lack of parking to be worth the trip. We didn't stick around very long after lunch, preferring to get the long journey back to Borderland underway.

The whole trip home, we kept talking about how we really wished we could go pick up Sadie from the vet that evening. I knew this was a futile wish, as the vet was closed, but despite knowing she was well taken care-of, our parental guilt at having left her with strangers for six days was overwhelming. I told the wife that I'd promised Sadie I would be on site at 8:30 when they opened to pick her up. Unfortunately, the vet told me that pickup time for the kennel didn't start until 10 a. Add to that the fact that this was also daylight savings time weekend, which added another hour and then add that I neglected to set all the clocks ahead and it was nearly 10 a by the time I realized it, and Sadie had a bit longer of a wait than promised.

I brought the new video camera with me to document her release.



The staff said she had been kind of freaked out for the first day of her stay, but settled down after that. One of the vet techs who worked there had even befriended her, for she went right over to him and licked his hand when he came out to say good bye. He mentioned that he thought she was too smart for her own good, as it had taken him 20 minutes to corral her back into the kennel after one of her five or six daily yard-sessions.

After leaving the vet's we headed for the wife's office for a reunion visit. After that, we had a good long walk in the park, which is where I noticed that Sadie was attempting to take a whiz about once every two minutes. I knew this wasn't normal behavior for her, but didn't know if the exposure to the no doubt stratified layers of dog urine in the vet's exercise yard had blown a territorial fuse in her, causing her to pee on everything, or if she was suffering from what I suspected was a urinary tract infection. Turns out the latter, which I learned after returning her to the vet's office that afternoon. The vet said that such infections were common in stressful situations, such as a first time away from home and owners, and a couple weeks of antibiotics would knock it out. They did.

Rou Baffroom Adwentier, Pert Elebmuh

Whew! We finally got the shower surround caulked and grouted.

They always warn you in any major home improvement project that you need to keep your momentum or you risk losing your drive to finish the job. This is very very true, as both I and my friend Joe can attest.

Back when Joe was a wee lad living near Starkville, MS, his parents purchased some land near the Longview community and proceeded to build a house upon it. They got the framing, wiring, flooring and most of the drywalling finished and then moved into the place, thinking that they could finish the rest of what needed to be done better from within. Moving took a lot of energy out of them, so Joe's parents decided to take a small break in the building process. At last count that break has lasted nigh on 30 years. From all indications Joe will have to finish the project when he inherits the home following their passing, some time in the future.

That lesson in hand, we were determined not to lose our momentum on the bathroom. After we got the tile in place, we decided to give the room a week or so for it to completely set before we could caulk and grout and then start on the floor tile. That was about a month ago and the most we actually accomplished from our list of things to do was the caulking.

Finally, this past Sunday, the wife and I decided to just go ahead and do both the grouting and our taxes, the two major projects we'd been putting off. Turned out neither task was all that painful. Now that we've finished the grouting I realize that it was an easy enough job that I could have done it by myself a LOOOONG time ago. But being the under confident soul that I am when it comes to home improvement and doing the job right, I wanted the wife to be there too, if only to share the blame if things went south.

And, continuing to build momentum again, as of today we've also cemented down both of the floor boards in preparation for tiling, installed the tub faucet and shower head (including the hand-unit for the shower), installed the shower curtain and hung up the shampoo holder hangy dealy over have made the tub pretty much usable. We've even tested it out.

Now we just have the rest of the room to do, which will commence later this week and through the weekend with the floor tiling. And just to make things more challenging... we're laying the tiles at an angle! (Could we live more exciting lives?)

Our Med-Con Con Adventure, Part 6

On Saturday, I announced my determination to find me a comic shop or two. I had addresses for the one in Georgetown and another one in Herndon, VA, that I found in the phone book, and was going to find them if it killed me. And it almost did.

I gave my addresses to the concierge at the Gaylord National and she printed out Google Maps directions. Unfortunately, the set that was to take me to Georgetown was defective and called for me to take a road that did not seem to correspond with any of the signage I saw and instead of winding up on the 295 loop, took me onto what looks like Old 295, the Anacostia Freeway, which leads out east away from D.C. proper. And shortly after I turned around and headed back, some asshole nearly ran over me going 80 mph in a 55 zone. Eventually, I saw Pennsylvania Avenue and decided to take it as I knew it would lead me in the right direction.

Once I made it to Georgetown, the shop was easy enough to find. Parking on a Saturday morning, however, was thin on the ground and I eventually had to park way back in a neighborhood.

I'd heard Georgetown was one of the cooler, hipper neighborhoods in the country and other than the parking situation, I'd have to agree. I got to walk around and see a good bit of the Wisconsin Ave section of it, cause the comic shop didn't open until 11. It has a really great atmosphere that I'd liken to a much larger-scale version of downtown Tri-Metro, or the Little Five Points section of Atlanta without the riff raff. I popped into a pet store to buy a new toy for Sadie, hoping to pay her off for ditching her for nearly a week (a factor we still felt guilty about).

The comic shop, Big Planet Comics, was well worth the wait. Huge trade paperback selection, including lots of indys, not to mention the last few months worth of all the current issues. I was able to find the first three issues of Top Ten Season Two, which my local shop managed not to get for me, as well as the 5th Goon TPB and the Tick 20th Anniversary Issue, which my old old shop back in Tri-Metro didn't get for me because they were in the process of going out of business and neglecting to tell anyone.

After nearly an hour in the shop, I was hungry and decided to walk across Dunbarton street to Five Guys Burgers. I'd never been to a Five Guys Burgers before, but it struck me as the sort of neighborhood place that made a damn fine burger. From the crowd there, I knew this would be true. (I'd later learn that Five Guys Burgers is pretty much a national chain, now, but this particular location was one of their earlier ones.) I ordered a bacon cheeseburger, that turned out to be a double. (You can order the "Little" bacon cheeseburger, if you want a single.) The guy at the counter didn't hear my fries order, so I had to come back and reorder them, asking for a regular fries instead of a large. After he'd already put the order in, though, I heard someone else order Cajun fries and I asked if he could switch mine to Cajun, too. This seemed like it might not be doable at first, but he wound up grabbing a different bag from the finished orders counter and passed them to me. On looking at them, I thought he must have made a mistake and given me a large order of fries, for within the paper bag was a very large paper cup filled to overflowing with hand-cut fried potatoes. Then, below that, the bottom of the bag had at least two inches of more fries, atop which was a small cup of Cajun seasoning. Now, while I thought I'd been mistakenly given a large, this was actually the regular size. I know this because I brought the wife there on Sunday afternoon and we opted to share a large, which turned out to be a big-gulp cup filled with fries and then half a bag worth below that. The burger and fries were outstanding and the experience of sitting at their bar and eating them while reading a free newstand copy of The Onion was even better. I highly recommend the experience.

Even though I'd had my fill of burger and comics in Georgetown, I decided to head up to Herndon and check out a shop up there. This involved following more Google Maps directions, which turned out to be accurate this time. Unfortunately, I wound up on a partial toll road and found myself hemmed in on both sides, in the EZPass lane and was forced to blow through the first of the toll booths. I was instantly terrified that my infraction at this 50 cent toll booth would come back to haunt me in a major way. Virginia, after all, is now infamous for issuing excessively priced tickets compared to other states when it comes to traffic violations. I was seeing figures in my head upwards of $500. I asked at the next booth if I could pay for the previous one, but the guy just pointed to a toll free number on a sign and told me to call them. As of this writing, things seem to be okay and I was able to call the number and pay my 50 cents over the phone. They didn't even seem to have my infraction in their system yet, but assured me that if it did come up the license plate associated with it would be flagged as paid.

Then, to add insult to injury, when I finally found Phoenix Comics & Toys, it was a closed up storefront for an out of business store. Maybe it will one day rise from the... well, you know.